John Walker's Electronic House

For episode 48 of Rum Doings we don’t discuss whether it’s time to ban fireworks to protect our children. But we do attempt to guess what the internet and technology will look like in 2020. And look at the sad state of John’s Kingdom of America. Then the best thing ever: 10,000 Dreams And Their Traditional Meanings. (Which turns out to be by Gustavus Hindman Miller.)

John learns some Latin, we talk about the fight for the rainbow, and what it’s like to watch a podcast being recorded. Nick then announces that Rock, Paper, Shotgun is not a blog. And then we discuss the lack of corruption in the industry.

Many apologies for the very strange blippy nature of the recording. We’ve deemed it perfectly listenable, if a tiny bit annoying. If anyone knows what might be causing it, let us know. We’re using a Logitech USB mic in a Win 7 HP Mini 311C, recording on Audacity. (If it helps, there seems to be a fictional 8 seconds at the end that doesn’t exist, which is presumably the total time stolen by the blips.)

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

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To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e48.mp3]

In a forty-seventh episode of Rum Doings, we take our lead from your Twittered suggestions. But we don’t discuss the fluoride conspiracy.

We begin by reminiscing over the last two weeks of events in exquisite detail, before diving into your suggestions. Oh, and after killing a cat, live on air.

What do centaurs do with their arms? Do our listeners hate Israel? A peculiarly placed review of Medal Of Honour. Nicknames. Do our listeners still hate Israel? How do we prefer to insulate our parcels? Premarital sex? Baseball! Prime numbers! What are our favourite most hated films? Hollywood musicals, and midi orchestras. That’s more than enough.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e47.mp3]

Episode 46 of Rum Doings begins with confusion over Ghostbusters cartoons. It turns out that Nick was talking about this, while John was talking about this.

Not being discussed this week: Staycations. But Nick does want to discuss synthesised theme tunes. After quite a long diversion into this week’s vile drink, John steers the conversation toward the Insane Clown Posse. This video being key:

This was inspired by a wonderful article by Jon Ronson, which you can read here.

Then it’s time for Nick’s polemic against Poetry, which gives John an excuse to rage about how much he dislikes Poetry Please.

And now here’s your homework. A full critical analysis, and what it means, sent to our email address. By Tuesday morning, please.

An ode to the tcp/ip protocols.

A war of ice but doomsday thaws beneath
A map of ink, once breached, a world unsaved;
A frigid winter beckons, deadly wreath
To words not launched, so bombs subsume the grave.
But missiles questing on their morbid route
Still need some tangled speech to guide them through
A chain of words in terminal pursuit
But wordly packets glitter forth like dew
They spread themselves betwixt the frosted blades
Fecundity of knowledge jumbled up
Re-formed at every end in liquid braids
Of speech now flowing into Man’s shared cup
For Cerf and allies thought it for the best
That flames be naught but datagrams of text

We consider if accents can be racist, ban “How are you?”, and complain about dreaming. Then Nick sings for us. And then completely ignores John’s attempt to sing back. There’s a teaser for a future discussion of CAP Alert, and then thoughts on Mary Poppins.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e46.mp3]

My sister pointed out that there’s a rude lack of pictures of my niece on this blog, when compared to pictures of my nephew. There’s no favouritism here, so to prove it, here’s Sarah:

Someone anonymously sent me this via Formspring, and it’s made my day.

Click it for a bigger version.

Excuse the brevity in describing episode 45 of Rum Doings, but in an episode in which we don’t discuss the abolishing of the pocket calculator (for children), we do discuss some subjects at length, and sometimes quite seriously.

There are a lot of thoughts on the coalition government, for which you’ll need this as a primer:

Then Banksy and the Simpsons opening:

And then the issues with Art With A Capital A.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e45.mp3]

Here’s two new pictures of Dexter, because people keep asking for them. I realise that I’m a person blogging pictures of his cat, but it’s everyone else’s fault. Click on them for big versions.

First, this is from yesterday. I was playing [unreleased game – Censorship Ed] and finding it rather dull. Dex curling up on the desk between my arms on the mouse/keyboard made it a lot more fun.

Dexter likes to sleep on clothes. Given an entire duvet, he’ll sleep on the dropped t-shirt or trousers. In fact, occasionally he’ll jump up on my bed and let loose an enormous, disgusted MEOW if he can find no clothes to curl up on. Pointing out to him that the entire duvet cover is essentially a giant piece of material has no effect. He especially likes to sleep on clean clothes, in order that they can quickly become clothes covered in cat hair and whatever lifeforms he’s brought in with him. His will to find clean clothes to sleep on was taken to a new level today:

A few more at other angles below.

(continue reading…)

In the fourtiforth episode of Rum Doings we don’t discuss the recovery of the ozone layer. But we do discuss the share value of Stephen Fry. And the peculiarity of Hugh Laurie’s history.

Chatting briefly about Nurse Jackie brings us to United States Of Tara, and thus dissociative identity disorder. And Dexter. The TV show.

There’s comments on Formspring, Homicide: Life On The Streets, and suddenly why does John live in Britain? Is he proud or something?! We turn into the world’s oldest men and complain about cinema prices, and then the horror of plastic packaging.

Somehow chat about films takes us to Nick telling John off for Vince Cable. And then scientific funding. Next, we ask those big impossible questions, like… oh, they’re really simple. Find out why the sky’s blue. And what we’d take from our burning houses.

But the main reason for listening to today’s episode is to find out whether Nick can get into the plastic packaging with only his fingers and teeth.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e44.mp3]

This week on Rum Doings, episode 43, we don’t discuss whether it’s time to abolish the metric system. Instead we discuss John’s adventures in France, and Nick’s adventures in complaining about John.

We talk about angry listeners, read French labels, and driving 1 litre cars with cup holders. And John makes a bold declaration: no more anecdotes. In an attempt to stop repeating anecdotes.

Our French theme continues with recalling French lessons at school, then bad teachers, big vases, and exponentially expanding biscuits.

There’s an attempt to identify what fills Victoria Wood’s bilious bag, confederate flags on British cars, and Nick teaches us Chinese. Then we handle the tragic death of Jimmy Heselden with extreme sensitivity. This takes us onto discussing those who were killed by inventions they were closely associated to. Then, as you’d expect, an exploration of the Chinese Five Pains Method.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e43.mp3]

Fear not.

New Rum Doings will appear tomorrow.